These Sleeping Pills Can't Forgive
by zenintheart
Summary: Clare Edwards is hurt and confused, will she make a mistake and break an already broken boy?
1. Prologue

**These Sleeping Pills Can't Forgive : **_Prologue_

_There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or_

_which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken._

_-__Charles Bukowski_

She used to find sleep easily. All of her life, Clare Edwards had slept well. Her eyes had found rest and her mind had found peace short after she laid her maple cinnamon hair onto her blue satin pillowcase. There were few times when she didn't sleep. Her sleep habits had a young Darcy betting that her little sister wouldn't be able to stay up on New Year's Eve, but with droopy eyes the young girl welcomed in the New Year with a tired toot on her horn. She spent a few terrible nights resting her sweaty forehead on the cold white porcelain of the toilet seat, the smell of vomit fresh in her nose as she suffered from the dreaded stomach flu. She tossed and turned the night of Darcy's incident. The family had to leave the eldest girl in the hospital overnight for observation and it unsettled Clare that her sister was not a pillow's throw away asleep in the clone of her own twin bed. Then when her parents had begun fighting, their bickering keeping her up until the early hours of the morning. She would lay in bed with her pillow pressed into her ears trying desperately to tune out her mother's strident wails and her father's foul mouthed insults.

This night was different. The street was quiet outside. There were no parties being held, no chips and dip and pop and pretzels littered her living room floor. Her stomach felt fine. Darcy's bed had long since been moved out of the small pink bedroom and sold, and the Edwards parents were segregated, her mom in the once master bedroom, and her father in a condominium complex downtown. But Clare Edwards could not find sleep. She had heard once, some French proverb, that a clear conscience makes the best pillow. Her pillow had always been soft and fluffy, comfortably supporting her head. Yet tonight it was too soft, her face sunk right to the bottom of the pillow, making a canyon and causing her to toss uncomfortably. Because for the first time, Clare Edwards' conscience was not clear.

When it became apparent that tonight there would be no rest for the wicked, she groaned and stretched out a small hand towards her nightstand. Her hand wrapped around the pull of the light, with it's multicolored beads digging into her skin she pulled down and the light flickered on. It cast a harsh yellow glow on the pale girl's legs, and stung her eyes as she got off the bed. She soon returned with her light pink laptop in her arms, cradling the device like a newborn. When her parents bought her the computer, begrudgingly, for her start of high school when it became apparent that she would need it to keep up with her work they didn't expect her to ever use it for anything malicious. If only Helen knew what power her daughter had in the next room over.

Clare flipped open the laptop and pressed hard on the power button as the screen soon turned to blue and an animated logo appeared. She pulled her finger across the trackpad, down to the screen's dock where she pulled open the browser and typed in . She moved her mouse to the search bar and replaced the words search with the name "Eli Goldsworthy". Her pinky hit the enter key. The page popped up. His face so unaware in the picture that remained his display haunted her. He had no precognitive visions telling him what was to come. The heartbreak, the pain, and the loneliness that was to come. In that picture, with his arm around her shoulders and his eyes shut as he placed a kiss on the top of her head, he was happy.

Clare Edwards was a thief. She stole his happiness. She stole the sparks in his smirk, the twinkle in his eye, and she stored them selfishly in a box of photos she kept next to her bed. Worse than stealing his happiness yet was stealing his credibility and his sanity. His happiness had been taken from him many times before Clare Edwards. The first time it went missing he had hoarded to fill the empty space that his happiness had once occupied. But he had learned that it was not a permanent presence and he knew it was not his to keep. He acknowledged as it slipped in but did not mourn its loss as it left him. It was only a visitor.

But he had worked hard to keep himself private. His deepest secrets and fondest memories were the only belongings he had. He kept them out of the reach of most which is why he came off as guarded. But Clare Edwards had broken through the gate and taken the things that meant the most to him, selling them to the world like a celebrity's dirty laundry.

Her eyes began fogging as she scrolled down the page and saw what she had done. She had sold her soul and she had broken a boy. She slapped the computer closed and stood up, her vision was shaking and her heart was heavy. She walked unbalanced on her feet to the washroom and stared at the reflection in her mirror. She did not recognize it. She opened the cabinet and grabbed the bottle of Tylenol PM. One, two, three, tiny pills colored like sleep toppled into her hand. One, two, three, tiny pills colored like sleep toppled into her mouth. One, two, three tiny pills toppled down her throat.


	2. A Bridge Too Far

**These Sleeping Pills Can't Forgive :**_Chapter One_

_"This is my knife._

_It is very sharp and very eager to hurt you."_

_-__Lemony Snicket_

The water was all around her, the waves crashed upon her eyelashes and swirled closer and closer to her mouth. Her arms. Why couldn't she move her arms? They were paralyzed as she desperately begged her mind to let her swim. The tide was getting higher, the sand under her slipped as the water went out and she fell into a more horizontal state. Each time the ocean rolled in it came farther up her face, she closed her mouth as the liquid bathed her lips and blew air out her nose as it crept past her nostrils. The water began to pull away only as far as her chin. Then it pulled away only to the bottoms of her earlobes. Panic set in as the water settled in her philtrum, the dimple above her lips. She thrashed in her mind, her limbs bound in a straitjacket. She was drowning. She was dying. A desperate wail cut through the water, a scream of bloody murder that no one could hear. The sensation of having screamed overtook her as the water trickled down her throat at the opportunity, singeing her. The water slowly crushed her lun- All was heavy. All was hurting. All was dark.

Clare Edwards vaulted out of her dreams into the cold air that filled her bedroom. Her insides were boiling and her hair was caked onto her forehead which was drenched with sweat. This was the third time this week she had had to suffer through the same nightmare. As if she weren't drowning enough when awake, she had to drown when she closed her eyes to dream as well. Her chest was still heaving, her breaths crippled and her mind racing. Her eyes flew to the electric clock on the table beside her bed. '4:52' the clock spelled in square red dashed letters. A hour and a half was all the time that remained of her night. But she couldn't fall back to sleep like this, her skin was salty like the ocean really had washed over her face and she needed to wash it off. Clare pushed the blanket away from her soggy body, and moaned as the air conditioner breathed against her moist skin. The floor was chilly as her soles pushed against it, walking their way to the bathroom. She disrobed her body and crept into the shower, her body nudged away from the transitioning spray of water. It fluctuated from too cold to too hot, leaving Clare plastered against the shower wall during the two poles, until it had reached a happy median.

.

.

.

"Cuh-lah-re" Alli yelled as she stepped through the metal detectors into the building. She stopped and turned back to her friend, wishing that she could just ignore her without suffering the wrath of the Alli. Alli was great. Most of the time. Though she failed to be sympathetic when Clare needed it most and now was one of those times.

"Yeah Alli?" Clare questioned in a soft voice.

"Dave and I finally took that next step!"

"I'm so happy for you!" Clare mustered the smallest of smiles, her lips stretching just a bit to satisfy her best friend. She really was excited for Alli, excited that she had gotten the boy. Dave seemed nice, even if he had treated Sadie terribly, leaving the niner in the same position Clare had been left in by KC just last year.

"I mean even after you rejected him last ye-" Clare's voice trailed off at the same rate as Alli's smile slipped off of her face. The small girl turned to face her best friend.

"Look. I know you're screwed up from whatever the hell kind of relationship you had with Eli but can't you just try to be happy for me?"

Clare blanched and gulped as she nodded, "I am happy for you."

.

.

.

The lights were off in the computer lab as she walked in. The movements of her body waking the fluorescents up, out of the rest that they needed after having to suffer through the chore of basking these snotty kids all day long.

_"They have all night to sleep" _Clare thought.

The girl was enjoying her small moment of solitude as she mindlessly scrolled through pages of a photography blog, some of the pictures making her smile. A much needed break from the weight of her own life.

This serenity was short lived as Alli came hopping into the room, if one could hop while wearing three inch heels, that is.

"There you are!" She singsonged, "I've been looking for you, I need to tell you something!"

Clare groaned and composed herself as she tried to quickly think of a way to say what she needed to without offending her best friend.

"Al? I'm kind of busy, do you think we could talk later?"

Alli leaned over her friend's shoulder,

"Hmm. Pictures. Really pressing."

…

"You know what your problem is?" Alli pressed,

"You just need closure. You need to get over Eli, and the best way to do that is to get back at him."

Alli's words struck a cord with Clare as she left her best friend sitting on a yoga ball to ponder what she had said.

.

.

.

Clare Edwards didn't know how it was that she got here, how her hand was moving the mouse, how her eyes were reading the page. _"The Anti-Grapevine" _the blog was titled; it was full of gossip about everyone who there was to gossip about. She didn't even understand what had compelled her to log on to the website; perhaps because reading about the lives of other people would take her mind off of her own. As she moved farther into the archives, Clare was perplexed as to how no news of Eli's accident had made it onto the blog. If the school did know, most students would instantly see him in a different light, a light that only lit up crazy.

The latest article was about some girl sleeping with Owen Milligan at Fiona Coyne's party. Her eyes began to drift away from the screen, bored with the supposed "news." Why people actually fed off of these rumors like vultures off of the carcasses of forgotten animals. She scrolled down to the bottom of the page when a link caught her eyes. The link was small and blue, placed at the bottom of the post, a signature you might say. It read, "_Got any hot gossip? Submit anonymously here." _Clare moved her cursor atop the tiny navy words and click, she was brought to a new page with an empty message box.

Alli's words had been engrained into Clare's mind and she felt like a DVR on crack, as the advice just wouldn't stop replaying. She stared at the empty message box, and suddenly gave impulse to typing away sentences she did not edit. She always edited. In the box she used only 22 words, she wrote:

_"Junior Eli Goldsworthy crashed his hearse the night of the dance in an act of desperation to manipulate poor sophomore Clare Edwards."_


End file.
